The present invention relates generally to apparatus and methods for simulating aircraft flight.
More specifically, the present invention relates to a voice interactive simulator for simulating air traffic audio communications.
Anecdotally, flying in a commercial aircraft is said to be safer than driving an automobile. However, where accidents do occur, large numbers of individuals often lose their lives or suffer severe injuries. Moreover, even where injuries have not occurred, accidents involving commercial aircraft typically result in substantial damage to the aircraft and a substantial corresponding monetary losses.
Moreover, alarming statistics are available relating to the number of aircraft accidents involving private pilots. In general, private pilots do not possess the training and experience possessed by commercial pilots. Furthermore, planes owned privately typically do not include the safety equipment carried by commercial aircraft and are typically not inspected or maintained to the requirements of commercial aircraft. As a result, flying in a private plane is statistically far more dangerous than flying in a commercial aircraft.
To reduce the aforementioned dangers, aircraft pilots and trainees must conduct substantial study and training in the fields of aeronautics and avionics. In addition, pilots and trainees conduct substantial training in an actual working environment. For example, commercial pilots must typically finish several hundred hours or more of flight time before they can be licensed to fly an aircraft. Unfortunately, in many situations it is either impractical or impossible to provide training in an actual aircraft. For example, the training of new pilots and the continued training of more experienced pilots cannot often be practically or economically accomplished with the aircraft itself.
It is for these reasons, that flight simulators have been developed. Typical flight simulator systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,607,306 issued to Bothwell, U.S. Pat. No. 3,924,342 issued to Pedlar et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,286 issued to Acklam and U.S. Pat. No. 4,751,662 issued to Crosbie. Such flight simulator systems are ideally constructed as exact replicas of the actual working environment and provide audio/visual experiences simulating actual flight. These simulator systems typically include switches, buttons, gages, meters and other controls for simulating the actual controls used in the working environment of an aircraft. The simulator systems also typically include a visual display for displaying the simulated ground terrain, the horizon and the sky as seen from an actual aircraft. In operation, the training systems simulate the actual conditions in response to the trainee's or pilot's use of the simulator controls. In this way, pilots and trainees can gain valuable experience in flying without the costs associated with actually flying an aircraft.
Unfortunately, such systems do not provide training to pilots and trainees on how to communicate with air traffic controllers. Air traffic controllers are provided with air traffic controller procedure manuals including several hundred pages of detailed instructions on when and how to communicate with pilots. Radio communication protocol between pilots and air traffic controllers is indeed very complicated, which presently must largely be learned by pilots through trial and error. As a result, pilots can become overwhelmed with the amount of information given to them by air traffic controllers. For example, a pilot given the heading, "right 350, climb and maintain 2,500" may be misconstrued as "right 250, climb and maintain 3,500". Though the instructions generally given to the pilot are required to be read back to the air traffic controller, this swapping of numbers can sometime go unnoticed causing very dangerous situations. In addition, confusion between pilots and air traffic controllers can often be exacerbated when the individuals involved come from different regions and have different accents.
Unfortunately, the lack of training by pilots in air traffic controller protocol has resulted in the past in aircraft accidents involving injury and death. For example, on Nov. 19, 1996, an aircraft accident occurred in Quincy, Ill. as a result of miscommunications by a pilot during takeoff. The failure of a pilot to announce his intention to take off created a collision between two airplanes resulting in 14 fatalities. In addition, on Oct. 21, 1997, at West Palm Beach, Fla., a pilot mistakenly landed on runway 27R, when in fact he had been cleared for 27L. This mistake resulted in the aircraft encountering wake turbulence and the aircraft's collision with the ground. This crash resulted in two serious injuries.
Accordingly, there is a considerable need for the training of aircraft pilots and trainees in the use of air traffic controller protocol. More particularly, there is a need for an interactive voice simulator for training aircraft pilots and trainees in the required terminology, procedures and customs of the communications between pilots and air traffic controllers. Unfortunately, such systems are not now provided to trainees or pilots. In contrast, aircraft simulators such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,281,994 issued to Dell et al. disclose the audio output of prerecorded messages to a simulator user. However, such systems are incapable of interacting with the trainee's vocal commands or instructions, or correcting the trainee where his commands or instructions are in error. Moreover, there is no disclosure that voice interactive systems such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,617 issued to Bolin et al. or U.S. Pat. No. Re. 34,587 issued to Crane et al. are capable of being adapted for use with a flight simulator. Accordingly, a need has arisen for an apparatus for providing aircraft pilots and trainees with air traffic voice interactive simulation, and for methods of training aircraft pilots and trainees in air traffic controller protocol to reduce the dangers of aircraft flight.